2008 Woodie Awards
Neighbors stolen into slavery
Rudy Ornelas
Issue date: 12/7/06 Section: Opinion
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I went to Mexico two months ago to attend my grandfather's funeral. Two days before I was planning to return to Lakin, I discovered an injustice that I was totally oblivious to. An injustice that is happening right here in America and one that took leaving the country for me to learn about it.
I was sitting on my aunt's porch in Mexico when a beat up old Dodge Ram pickup passed by the house.
I watched it pass not thinking much of it and went back to my thoughts. A few minutes later, the sound of "Joaquin, ven." [Joaquin, come here] interrupted my thoughts; a loud BANG followed and my thoughts were scattered.
Startled, I turned to look down the street and saw the Dodge pickup peel out and speed down the road. A lady came out of her house and let out one of the loudest screams of despair I've ever heard.
Then she crouched next to what, through the dust left by the pickup, seemed to be a dead dog.
A crowd gathered. The lady was not hugging a dead dog, but instead a man with no face.
More shocking to me than the fact that a man had just been shot in broad daylight, was the reactions of the neighbors.
"That's what he gets!" A boy yelled as he ran down the street.
His sentiment was shared by most of the other neighbors. One by one, as the onlookers turned away from the scene I heard whispers of "he had it coming" and "I feel bad for his mother but what did they think was going to happen if he came back here?"
My old neighborhood is not violent. It is incredibly uncommon for someone to get shot. Despite there being seven or eight eye witnesses, no one said anything to the police.
How is it that my neighborhood has become so cold? How could they say anyone deserves to die like that? What could he have done? When I learned what it was that Joaquin did, I had to agree with them.
While in America, Joaquin and his friends would steal people who were trying to cross the border. It is common for illegal immigrants to pay a guide, otherwise known as a Coyote, to bring them to the U.S. Joaquin located the Coyote's routes in the desert and would surprise immigrants as they crossed at night. Rumor had it that he was stealing the people from the Coyote at gunpoint. He would stuff them all in the back of a truck he had hidden and drive them into the U.S.
I was sitting on my aunt's porch in Mexico when a beat up old Dodge Ram pickup passed by the house.
I watched it pass not thinking much of it and went back to my thoughts. A few minutes later, the sound of "Joaquin, ven." [Joaquin, come here] interrupted my thoughts; a loud BANG followed and my thoughts were scattered.
Startled, I turned to look down the street and saw the Dodge pickup peel out and speed down the road. A lady came out of her house and let out one of the loudest screams of despair I've ever heard.
Then she crouched next to what, through the dust left by the pickup, seemed to be a dead dog.
A crowd gathered. The lady was not hugging a dead dog, but instead a man with no face.
More shocking to me than the fact that a man had just been shot in broad daylight, was the reactions of the neighbors.
"That's what he gets!" A boy yelled as he ran down the street.
His sentiment was shared by most of the other neighbors. One by one, as the onlookers turned away from the scene I heard whispers of "he had it coming" and "I feel bad for his mother but what did they think was going to happen if he came back here?"
My old neighborhood is not violent. It is incredibly uncommon for someone to get shot. Despite there being seven or eight eye witnesses, no one said anything to the police.
How is it that my neighborhood has become so cold? How could they say anyone deserves to die like that? What could he have done? When I learned what it was that Joaquin did, I had to agree with them.
While in America, Joaquin and his friends would steal people who were trying to cross the border. It is common for illegal immigrants to pay a guide, otherwise known as a Coyote, to bring them to the U.S. Joaquin located the Coyote's routes in the desert and would surprise immigrants as they crossed at night. Rumor had it that he was stealing the people from the Coyote at gunpoint. He would stuff them all in the back of a truck he had hidden and drive them into the U.S.
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